General
integrityofscience | December 18, 2006We're playing catch-up from last week's meeting and getting ready for the holidays, so no commentary today, just links to some interesting stories.
More from AGU:Al Gore Urges Scientists to Speak Out on Climate Change Live ScienceGore Tells Scientists to be Vocal About Climate Change DailyTech
Stories about science integrity:On a swift boat to a warmer world (Daniel Schrag op-ed) Boston GlobeUK noble to senators: Apologize to Exxon or resign Raw StoryWhen science is not science, blame politics Pocono RecordThe Hockey Stick is broken Gristmill
integrityofscience | December 18, 2006There was one particularly good talk we weren't able to blog on Thursday. Between media magnets Jim Hansen and Vice President Al Gore, we caught a terrific talk from Dr. Naomi Oreskes entitled "Deflecting Disinformation about Climate Change." More science, Oreskes finds, has only a limited effect of erasing Americans' doubts about climate change. Knowing the true nature of the problem - namely an organized two-decade-plus misinformation campaign - will lead scientists and advocates in the right direction.
A TIME magazine/ABC News/Stanford University poll finds that while 85% of Americans…
integrityofscience | December 15, 2006This week's American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting is quickly coming to a close. We've attended our last panel, an interesting couple hours on educating the public including folks from RealClimate.org, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, BBC, and more. This will be the first of two posts that will serve as a bit of an epilogue to the week.
It was exciting to be able to cover Al Gore's talk yesterday, and it has been more exciting to see the breadth of coverage the talk received -- shining quite a light on the issue of political tampering of science. Here's a sampling of stories we've seen…
integrityofscience | December 14, 2006Earlier today at the 2006 American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco, the former Vice President introduced himself, "I am Al Gore. I used to be the next President of the United States." Those who have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" will know the line, which predictably drew laughs. However, today's lecture, Climate Change: The Role of Science and the Media in Policymaking was stripped down and refocused. There were no PowerPoint slides, no Macintosh computer, no cherry pickers, just a man in a dark blue suit, a podium, and literally thousands of scientists hanging on his every…
integrityofscience | December 14, 2006No need for coffee this morning, as the energy in the 8 a.m. session on communicating science (particularly global warming science) has a palpable stimulating effect all its own. The star of the loaded panel was certainly Dr. Jim Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia University Earth Institute. After all, he's the national poster boy (or punching bag, depending where you stand) on the subject of federal interference in climate science.
"I speak today as myself and not as a spokesman for NASA," Hansen opened to clapping and a few chuckles. The implication, not…
integrityofscience | December 13, 2006At what point is the science certain enough on an issue?
Is there a line of policy involvement that scientists shouldn't cross?
What will the new Congress mean for science and scientists?
These were some of the questions aired at science integrity-related events at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting on Tuesday. At the morning discussion "Defining and Protecting the Integrity of Science: New Challenges for the 21st Century," panelists tackled the personal, the political, and much in between. Later in the day, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) sponsored a workshop for…
integrityofscience | December 8, 2006The "Green Room," a BBC News environmental opinion series, threw the gauntlet down to skeptics last week. In his column "Skeptics: Cards on the table please!" Richard Black issued a challenge to skeptics claiming that science is biased in favor of research confirming man-made climate change:
If you have evidence of research grants turned down because of a clash with the prevailing consensus, of instances where journals or conference organisers or consensus bodies have rejected "inconvenient" findings, please send it to us; my email address is at the bottom of this article.
With the…
integrityofscience | December 7, 2006Welcome to the Integrity of Science Blog, a project of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security.
The Pacific Institute's Integrity of Science Initiative responds to and counters the assault on science and scientific integrity in the public policy arena, especially on issues related to water, climate change, and security.
This blog will be used to feature commentary and criticism, highlight news stories, and allow readers to provide their own experiences and insight into this trend. We will pay particular attention to changes in attitude and practice in…
loom | October 22, 2006I'll be speaking on Saturday at the National Association of Science Writers annual meeting in Baltimore. I'll be discussing how writers can publicize science books in the age of the Internet. It's a subject I'm still figuring out for myself, so I won't be dispensing advice so much as sharing thoughts. Details are here.
I'm part of a scienceblogger invasion at the meeting. Matthew Nisbet will be there, talking about reporting on global warming, and Chris Mooney will be speaking about writing about science in new media.
loom | October 10, 2006The Seed in-house blog, Page 3.14 has been running Q & A's with some of its bloggers. Mine's up now.
loom | July 10, 2006A couple readers have emailed me asking what I think of the recent Nature article on blogs by scientists. I agree with Revere that it's great that Nature (and specifically, Nature reporter Declan Butler) is paying such close attention to blogs in science. The top 50 list they provide is a good launch pad for rocketing off into this realm of the blogosphere.
But I've always loathed the newsiness of lists. Put a number on a cover, and you sell copies. There must be some weird psychological weakness we have for lists. I noticed that the headline on the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly is…
loom | June 9, 2006Greetings. As I bring in my html luggage and unpack, let me stop for a moment to introduce myself and this blog.
I'm a science writer. I started out at Discover, where I ended up as a senior editor before heading out into the freelance world in 1999. Since then I've written for a number of magazines, and over the last couple years I've been writing pretty regularly for the Science Times section of the New York Times.
I also write books, which I've placed in the left column for those who are interested. I'm now trying to crank through the sixth, a biography of Escherichia coli (at least when I…
loom | May 23, 2006Oliver Morton, science writer and Nature news editor, is blogging after a long hiatus at MainlyMartian. He's reporting from the Synthetic Biology 2.0 meeting in Berkeley. Check it out.
Update: Actually, you may want to check out the cross-posting at Nature's blogs. Same entries, with comments.
loom | April 6, 2006My blog had some serious troubles while I was away for a few days, but I should have everything up and running smoothly today, including comments (aside from those concerining poker and drugs).
loom | March 28, 2006No, there's nothing wrong with your RSS feed. This blog has just gone very quiet as I've become insanely busy with an upcoming talk and my new book project (more on both later). I don't expect to have time to blog till the first week in April. But I'll have some delicious items to discuss then.
loom | March 10, 2006I take a look at two new books on global warming in Sunday's New York Times Book Review. The International Herald Tribune has already posted it on their site (which has no subscription wall to boot). (Update: NYTBR link.) The books are The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery and Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. Both are very good (though not perfect) books, and I suspect that they may have a noticeable effect on the discourse about global warming. I will be curious (in a kind of staring-at-a-car-wreck way) to watch the reaction of the global warming denial crowd. Flannery's…
loom | March 10, 2006Mike Lemonick, Time's excellent senior writer on science, has started a blog. I can't think off the top of my head of another staff science writer at a big magazine or newspaper who has a blog (as opposed to us itinerant science scribes). So welcome to Mike.
One quibble: why no comments? A journalist who doesn't let blog readers comment is...well, I won't use bad language here (but I will here).
Perhaps that's the downside of life on staff--lots of lawyers hovering about.
loom | February 11, 2006Over at DailyKos, DarkSyde has been interviewing science bloggers. Here's our exchange. Greetings to visitors from DailyKos--make yourself at home. If you're looking for a few samplers of the stuff I write, you may want to check out the "Starting Points and Old Favorites" list in the righthand column. I had hoped to respond to comments at DailyKos, but for some reason I can't set up an account. (And yet I still have the audacity to claim to be a blogger....) In the meantime, I'm happy to field any questions through the comments here.
loom | February 10, 2006Congratulations to Dan Vergano of USA Today, Michelle Nijhuis of High Country News for winning the 2006 journalism awards from the American Geophysical Union. The AGU is the country's leading organization of Earth scientists. Both reporters won for articles on global warming.
You can read Vergano's article here, and Nijhuis's here, here, and here.
I imagine that George Deutsch is looking for some things to do to fill the time he once spent censoring NASA scientists about global warming. As an ex-journalism major, he might be interested in reading some reporting that scientists recognize for…